Willie McGee

Black laborer from Laurel, Mississippi accused November 1945 of raping Willette Hawkins, a white housewife — a charge his defense (led by young Bella Abzug for the Civil Rights Congress) argued masked a long-running consensual relationship and was a frame-up. Convicted three times before all-white juries (the first jury deliberated only 2½ minutes). Case became a global cause célèbre with appeals from Albert Einstein, William Faulkner, Josephine Baker, and Jessica Mitford. Executed in Mississippi's portable electric chair on May 8, 1951 in the Laurel courthouse before a cheering white crowd.